The title character of “Salt,” about a CIA operative accused of being a Russian mole, looks just like Angelina Jolie.

All right, it is Jolie. And forget that her paycheck for portraying ace of spies and new franchise protagonist Evelyn Salt is a reported $20 million.

What must really have set Sony Pictures back was staging that whole Russian-spy tie-in a couple of weeks ago. We jest, but the coincidence of the adrenaline-revved film with the Cold War-esque kerfuffle is a rich one.

“Salt” entertains with a bygone faceoff that is more easily understood (at least in hindsight) than the West’s current one with al-Qaeda, its offshoots and its wannabes. Old-school nuclear brinksmanship even makes a cameo.

In “Salt,” a graying Cold Warrior turned defector arrives at the CIA with a fable from the bad old days. Daniel Olbrychski brings underplayed gruffness to the mysterious, lethal Orlov, as he tells his dark tale to Salt, who is interrogating him.

He recounts the machinations of a spymaster and the indoctrination of children for a diabolically patient plan to draw the U.S. into a war. It will start with the murder of the Russian president on American soil. His kicker? The name of the assassin is Evelyn Salt.

And so begins a wild and satisfying “Is she or isn’t she?” ride. “Salt” actually opens two years earlier, with the agent in a very Jack Bauer fix in a North Korean prison. What saves her is the devotion of spider expert Mike Krause (August Diehl), who becomes her husband.

Salt adores Krause, who’s plunged into danger as soon as Orlov names her. Her escape is about saving him. Or is it? Are her flashbacks of sweet courtship and pretty nuptials true or just remembrances of a highly evolved cover?

Liev Schreiber, as Salt’s handler Ted Winter, squares off against Chiwetal Ejiofor as her hunter, counterintelligence agent Peabody. Peabody wants to “bring her in or bring her down.” Winter still believes in his agent.

Casting Schreiber in the midst of the action delivers a nice bonus. The powerfully able performer played the title character in Jonathan Demme’s update of “The Manchurian Candidate” (2004), based on Richard Condon’s novel about a brainwashed plant.

New kind of chick flick?

Along the way to a tick-tick- tick conclusion, Jolie pulls off improbable feats. Since she’s been kicking hiney and taking no prisoners for a decade now (starting with “Gone in Sixty Seconds”), Jolie’s ongoing action successes seem to provide evidence of an evolving cultural story.

Are films like “Salt” and the physically vigorous Lisbeth Salander series playing at art houses (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played With Fire”) expanding other, fustier definitions of the chick flick?

After all, there’s hankering here. There’s love. Relationships matter. But they can be very dodgy. Trust is an issue. Betrayal seems a probability.

Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay mimics the challenges in trusting a spy. One minute, we’re certain Salt is a heroine we can believe in. Then her actions suggest otherwise. Is she on the run or on the job? Is she clearing her name or carrying out a long-programmed mission? This is well- seasoned stuff.

Noyce knows his way around the S-curves of politically charged sagas. He’s also capable of maneuvering emotional and ethical dilemmas. Action doesn’t race rough shod over the tale of a spy whose allegiances aren’t clear.

Still, some sequences are brazenly silly. Salt hurtles like a skipped stone from one tractor-trailer to another to a smaller truck on a highway that loops D.C. She maneuvers down an elevator shaft like Spidey, only with no web. Granted, the physically preposterous has become an action-flick staple. So, too, is a propulsive score. This one is the work of James Newton Howard.

Fortunately, Jolie is the movie’s never-idling engine. Yet, she knows how to still the nonstop with those eyes, that mouth, that face.